Dumbies: December 2005 Archives
Big Dumb Object would like to thank the following people who made the Dumbies possible this year.
Hosting : 34sp
Everything else : James
<elvis>thankyouverymuch<\elvis>
And the winners are...
The results for the inaugral Big Dumb Object awards (aka The Dumbies) will be released after Christmas and before New Year. The judges are currently cogitating (but will probably soon be eating and drinking instead).
No video games are eligible for this year's Dumbies because the judges have busy lives and no time to play games. They are hoping however that a Nintendo Revolution may change this next year.
The books up for Dumbie nomination are:
- River of Gods
- Accelerando
- The Time Travellers Wife
- The Brief History Of The Dead
- Gridlinked
- Singularity Sky
- Ender's Game
- Light
- Flowers For Algernon
The Dumbies have neatly circumvented the raging "should the Hugos split Fantasy and SF" debate, by completely excluding all Fantasy novels. This is despite a large proportion of the Dumbie's judge's years being spent reading Fantasy (mainly Harry Potter 6 and the never ending but quite excellent Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell). Once again the judges are disappointed at how few books they have read looking back at the year (and are sure that they've forgot some), but the afore mentioned large fantasy books did eat up some time. The much anticipated conclusion to The Baroque Cycle has been put on hold until next year, after some much needed "thin" books.
This years films contain the end of a saga and hopefully the start of a new one.
- Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith
- Serenity
The film nominations have suffered somewhat this year because of the judges inability to get to see Science Fiction films at the cinema, and then being lazy about renting them on DVD. Therefore a few of the years big films fail to qualify: The Hitchers Guide To The Galaxy, which the judges friends said was rubbish so don't bother, The War Of The Worlds which just sort of slipped by and probably deserves a watch on DVD and the critically unacclaimed The Island.
However the two films up for nomination made up for the lack of quantity with supreme quality, and both of them were critical successes.
This year's Dumbies Television nomination list contains an old show rediscovered and three new shows.
- Lost
- Battlestar Galactica
- Firefly
- Doctor Who
Doctor Who proved that Science fiction in the UK could be primetime family entertainment and was an incredible success for the BBC. Meanwhile Firefly continued to win over fans long after its demise thanks to the DVD release, and then managed to spawn a film. Battlestar Galactica won the critics over with its serious SF style, despite most of them desperately trying to discount it as Science Fiction or using cliches such as "redefining the genre". Finally Lost was a massive ratings success both sides of the Atlantic and qualifies as SF because the judges love it and it has a polar bear on a tropical island.
Big Dumb Object is pleased to announced the inaugral Big Dumb Object awards, henceforth know as The Dumbies.
Media are eligible for nomination if they have been seen or read by the judges panel in the year of 2005, no matter when they were released. Categories include Best Film, Best Book, Best Television Series and Best Videogame. There are no worst awards in The Dumbies, life is too short to consume bad media and the judges therefore try to avoid such matters.
After the nominations have been announced the judges will be open for bribes for an unspecified period of time. Once they are satisfied that the best offers have arrived and have cogetated on the nominations the judges will then make their decision and announce the awards in a grand ceremony that involves a single, but important, blog post.
Please feel free to specualte on the nominations until they are announced.
